The Tie That Binds

Identity and Political Attitudes in the Post-Civil Rights Generation

Andrea Simpson

Publication Year: 1998

What does it mean to be black in a nation increasingly infatuated with colorblindness? In The Tie That Binds, Andrea Y. Simpson seeks to answer this crucial question through the prism of ethnic and political identification.

Historically, African Americans have voted overwhelmingly Democratic in governmental elections. In recent years, however, politically conservative blacks--from Clarence Thomas to Louis Farrakhan to Ward Connerly-have attracted much of the media's gaze. What is the nature of black conservatives' constituency, and is it as strong and numerous as conservatives would have us believe? To what extent, if at all, does black conservatism stem from a weakened sense of collective racial identity?

Simpson tackles the peculiar institution of black conservatism by interviewing college students to determine their political attitudes and the ways in which these are shaped. The result is a penetrating interrogation of the relations between political affiliation, racial identity, and class situation.

Cover

Frontmatter

The Tie That Binds

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

This book evolved from research done for a doctoral thesis
in which evidence for the hypotheses was never discovered. The rejected
hypothesis, that the black middle class had a weaker racial
group identity than other blacks, hence more conservative political
attitudes, led to an inquiry into the nature of racial group identity, ...

Chapter 1. Introduction

This is a book about what it means to be black, specifically,
what it means to be black to members of a generation who many
hoped would never have to ponder such a question. It is also a book
about how answers to this question influence this generation’s political
attitudes. The perspectives of the young men and women in this ...

Chapter 2. The Conservatives, Part 1: The Republican Race Men

The most dynamic leaders in the African-American community
have emerged from historically black institutions—Martin
Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, and Maynard Jackson (Morehouse
College), to name a few. All the students featured in this chapter are
attending two of the three historically black institutions selected for ...

Chapter 3. The Conservatives, Part 2: The Traditional Conservatism of the South and the Struggle against Black Stereotypes

The Republican “race men” of the previous chapter are
conservative and possess a strong racial group identity. As Clifford
Apprey said, his conservatism and his Republicanism are “for black
people.” The students in this chapter are also conservative, but their
conservatism was not born of a desire for new solutions to black ...

Chapter 4. Issues of Empowerment and Liability: The Moderates

Several strands connect the six students who hold more
moderate political attitudes: First, all but one are solidly middle class;
second, they have not experienced much discrimination; third, all but
two attend majority-white institutions; and fourth, all point to the
failure of both blacks and whites to solve racial problems. Of the six ...

Chapter 5. Identity and Integration: The Liberals

The young black Republicans whose views we have examined
so far believe that problems in the African-American community
are not entirely the fault of whites. They also believe that
even if whites are responsible in part, they cannot solve those problems.
These young men are attracted to the Republican Party because ...

Chapter 6. The Tie That Binds and Redeems: Negotiating Race in the Post–Civil Rights Era

Members of the post–civil rights generation are discovering
that confronting race in an era without extreme conditions of
racial segregation and oppression is a thorny enterprise. The rise of
the black middle class has introduced the confounding element of
class into the racial equation, and overt signs of racial segregation and ...

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